My train from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth is a
bus. Again. It's not leaves on the line, or sheep. It's fans,
allegedly. The story goes that Arriva Trains Wales have upgraded
the cooling fans on their Cambrian Line trains with fans that really
suck. In hot weather, the poor little engines struggling up the hills start
to pant, and in want of wafting, they soon reduce to a crawl.
They broke their own trains. Ludicrous.
Every week. I'm Aberpystoffwyth it.

One Track Mind

The line from Aberystwyth to Birmingham is a
single track line until Shrewsbury, with a
paucity of passing places. If you're up
near the driver's cab, you can hear him gargling down the phone at the
start and end of each single track section, part of the ritual
known as ‘phlegming up the token’. If the train coming the
other way is late arriving at the passing place, you just sit there
until it turns up and expectorates. Pretty soon you're just as late
as it is... Nope, you're still not as late as it is... At last, you're
sodding late! Gargle gargle.

Wolverhamptoned Again!

When is a late train not a late train? When it's an on time train
which starts somewhere else. By the same principle that makes a
stopped clock right twice a day, if a train stays still long enough,
it will eventually become on time. Your train has crawled up hills,
waited at passing places and got stuck behind a service which also stops
at Oakengates, Shifnal, Cosford, Albrighton, Codsall and Bilbrook.
What they're going to do is kick everyone off at Wolverhampton and turn
around, becoming an on time service in the other direction.

Except that it isn't your train. Not yet. You're somewhere under
Birmingham wondering what the hell is going on. If they'd only told
you in time, you'd have caught any of the many frequent and
overstuffed services that could have got you to Wolverhampton. The
automated voice has to be extremely
sorry that the something seventeen
arrival from Aberystwyth has been
cancelled, before they'll even think of telling you to throw yourself
to Wolves. If you prick them, do they not bleed? Years after Alan
Turing arsenicked off to a better place, the discipline of Artificial
Sincerity which he founded is clearly still in its infancy.

The Tamworth Test

On my way from Nottingham to Aberystwyth, I generally use the little
bit of signal I get in the Tamworth area to check the Shrewsbury live
arrivals board. The estimated delay on the train from Aber gives me a
reasonable indicator of how likely I am to get Wolverhamptoned. If it
looks bad (what do I mean if?) then I don't even think of popping out
through New Street Revenue Protection for another bottle of water and
a packet of ginger biscuits, I just sprint across the concourse,
leaping over small children, just in time to see the back end of the stopping
train to Shrewsbury. So I sprint to some fast Virgin train bound for
Manky Picc or Embra (via the Lakes) which gets me to Wolverhampton so quickly
that I get so see the back end of the Shrewsbury stopper again!

Train? What Train?

When Stalin got hold of the Kremlin keys, he had Trotsky carefully
painted out of the celebrated picture showing the Party greeting Lenin
stepping down from the train on the occasion of his return from exile
in Germany. If it had been Arriva rather than Stalin, they'd have painted
out the train.

So it's something forty, I'm in Wolverhampton and the Aberystwyth
train is listed as on time for something fifty. Only now it
isn't. It's not marked cancelled. It's just not there at
all. You imagined it. The announcer, who sounds uncannily like the
late great David Rappaport, says nothing. Grumpy people are asking
the platform staff what's going on, but the staff work for Virgin so
nobody's told them anything. Eventually Rappaport-man tells us to get
the stopper to Shrewsbury. That's the one an hour after the one I
nearly caught in Brum. A fellow punter's on the phone to his wife. It
turns out that today's been especially hot, and the train's been
Wolverhamptoned at Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury ran out of complaint forms
in time for elevenses. That's why it's nearly tomorrow and I'm
ranting into my trousers on a bus stuck at temporary traffic lights just
outside Borth. It could be worse. It could be a level frigging
crossing.

It's Not All Bad

This is such a relentlessly regular occurrence that there's a kind of
Community of the Shafted. You say hello to someone you got stranded with
last week, and before long you've got someone to laugh with, as well as
clearly defined bunch of ludicrous
fools to laugh at. It's a good way of breaking the ice, and if you had some
actual ice, it would be good to break it, because some other people could
probably do with a bit.

Meanwhile, the on-train staff (if you're lucky enough to be on the
train) have to put up with this all day every day. They're already at
the nervous laughter stage. When you ask them ‘when
will...?’, they have that little chuckle that reassures you that
you're not turning into an insect on the Kafka train, and they're
straight enough to tell you that they couldn't honestly pretend to
have a clue, given how disastrous things have been all day. If you're
Mr Arriva and you're thinking of firing these
people for not being straight-faced automata lying through their teeth
on behalf of your shareholders, fire yourself instead.

this page uses parts of the Kubrick wordpress style,
as knocked about a bit by Peter Morris, then travestied by Conor